Bring India in and the equation changes quite phenomenally. Just like our people, vehicles on our roads are of various types. We have all the kind of Vehicles known to man kind running on our roads and each one of them is as important as the other. I would even think there are more (motor)bikes and scooters than cars on Indian roads.

Now, let me build a hypothesis on top of that previous statement. Arguably, The same person travelling between the same two given places may take a different route depending on the kind of vehicle he is on.

I, for one, prefer the side roads (gallis) and small roads that are less polluted and less crowded over main roads when I am on a motorbike. I am willing to ride a few hundred meters extra if I can skip a few junctions/signals which are a big bottleneck on traffic speeds. But when I am in a car, I would rather stick to the main roads because the condition of side roads are unpredictable. Plus, you never know if that big gravel truck is parked blocking the entire street. But, whenever I take the cycle, I really want to avoid main roads completely if possible, because, they are simply not safe.

There are very many ways to get to a place. Sometimes, you want to take the fastest route, Sometimes the shortest. But the kind of vehicle never used to play a part. But, now it does. At Yahoo! India maps. Search for a route and watch out for buttons on the right pane. Now Obviously, the single Search Box knows about all of this too. So, Type in "bike from anna flyover to parrys, chennai" and you get your (motor)bike directions. Or would you rather prefer a cycle around? Try "Cycle from Domlur bus stand to Yahoo egl Bangalore".

Check out the business search with radius-filter. You'll be amazed to know there are 135 'mobile stores' within 5 km of 'malleshwaram, bangalore'. Maps are integrated on the Business Profile pages. Now you can get directions to "Not Just Jazz by the Bay" from its profile page itself. While on that page, if you've been to NJJBTB, leave your footprint.

If you are in Bangalore and don't know which south indian restaurant to go to, our users will help you with their great reviews. For example, they'll tell you a lot about South Indies so that you are tempted to visit. And for dessert, if ice creams are your favourites, do visit the new Corner House on New BEL Road. If you want to know the location, here is it. Remember, if you can mark a better location, go ahead or just 'agree' to this one if you find it useful. For some after-food shopping, check out how 'Hakoba', the apparel shop looks from the outside. Your favourite shop is not present? Don't worry, just 'Add the Listing' to Local.

There's more that we'll let you explore at Yahoo! India Local.  So, go ahead and give it a try. Don't forget to let us know if you think things should get better. And if you liked the experience, let your friends know too...

Sridhar

Go to http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/ and enter your city name and a page with
latest content about the city is generated for you on the fly. Alternately
you can type the city name in the url such as
http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/mumbai , http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/murshidabad , http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/meerut , http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/miami , http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/manila , http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/munich or even smaller cities such as http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com/McCloud

Let us know your comments by clicking on the feedback link at the bottom of
the page.

We have covered the major cities and towns and will expand the "Language Map view" to other regions in the time to come. For us in the team, Maps in vernacular languages is magical. Because for once, our Grand-moms and Grand-dads will get to see and understand what we do all day long sitting at Yahoo!.

Congratulations Kush!

This time around we tried to get all hackers together in one space and collaborate together - as opposed to earlier times when hacking was restricted to their desks. This did create a lot of positive energy and buzz as hackers and non-hackers mingled during the science fair style hack demos. There were ~176 Hackers with ~121 Hacks. This is an awesome display of the enterprising nature of our employees. There were several other hack concepts that were not introduced into this event but will be getting due attention in the incubation "cellar" pipeline.

Judging the best hacks was a phased process with floor judging and a final top 25 judging panel. Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners) part of our esteemed judging panel and got a chance to review our hackers' creativity at close range.

We had some hicups in the process but that is part of the "Live & Learn" philosophy. We will be posting some of the hacks on our hack gallery page (coming soon). Some of the awards we gave out and how the Hackers coveted them were:

Which award do you covet?

• Show me the Money! (19%)
• Crazy Maverick! (17%)
• BEST HACKAHOLIC! (9%)
• Coolest Cucumber! (9%)
• I"m da Boss! (9%)
• Viral Attack! (8%)
• Sinfully Delightful! (8%)
• Ready2Ship! (6%)
• The Missing Link (6%)
• Audience Favorite! (6%)
• None of the Above! (4%)

And now to name the winners (hackers)

• Rajagopalan
• Sudharan
• Bhaskar
• Manmada
• Smita
• Mahaboob
• Abhishek
• Amit
• Pawan
• Jayadev
• Rohit
• Balaji
• Mahesh
• Kalyan
• Thiyaneshwar
• Helena
• Monika
• Nilesh
• Parvesh
• Malakar
• Karteek
• Abijit
• Subramaniam
• Praveen (P)
• Anoop
• Manav
• Praveen (K)
• Ashwin

Congratulations to all the winners.

The story: Yahoo India Maps provides location, business, landmark and partial address search along with driving directions at http://in.maps.yahoo.com for India (and the rest of the world). But wait. What is "Yahoo! Next" about it?

At the outset, We just knew location intelligence is a problem that exists in India. For instance, I noticed that people around me were always talking about how to get to places. In Trains, buses, over e-mails, IMs, Phone calls, everywhere. They were always wondering whether they took the correct turn, whether their destination is 2 kms or 3 kms away, whether they were paying extra to their Auto driver. They were also sitting and drawing ugly Map images that are not to scale and passing them as an image attachment over email. No doubt the problem existed and we wanted to solve it.

We also recognized that people here were used to a particular way of asking for directions. And it seems to work really well. For instance, I don't know what that road outside my office is called. I don't need to. I just gotta tell people "Embassy Golf Links, near Dell office" and they already know. Also, I even know of a road close to my home that does not have a name. Either nobody bothered to give it a name or nobody bothered to put a board there that says what the name of the road is. Clearly, we like our buildings and hoardings a lot.

Consider for example a typical (western style) driving directions instruction set that rely only on road names:
1 Straight on a local road eastwards
2 Right onto Infantry Rd, go <100m
3 Right onto Union Rd, go 0.1 km
4 Left onto Raj Bhavan Rd, go 1.5 km.
5 Right onto Local Road, go 0.1 km

Assume I am ever going to drive using these instructions, a number of questions pop up. Local Road? Eastwards? Do I have to go buy a magnetic compass? Can you tell me if the upcoming right is Infantry road or not? Wait a minute. I have never heard of Union Road. Am I in ulsoor or Jaya nagar? There are four roads splitting to the right from Raj Bhavan road. Which one do you mean?

I will probably just ask the next Auto driver on the whereabouts. That is just way much easier.

And so, we came up with something like this:
1 Straight (<100m) on a local road in Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore going toward Infantry Rd
2 1st Right onto Infantry Rd, go <100m
3 1st Right (past Gulshan Marriage Bhawan on the right) onto Union Rd, go 0.1 km
4 1st Left (past Sanchanan Chambers on the left) onto Raj Bhavan Rd, go 1.5 km.
Enter Sivanchetti Gardens.
5 3rd Right onto Dickenson Rd, go 0.1 km
6 2nd Left (past East Parade Church on the left) onto Mahatma Gandhi Rd, go 0.6 km.
Enter Ashok Nagar.

This is what we have come to call "Landmark and turn based driving directions". This is specially interesting to us because it solves a real problem using technology.

There are a few things Indians understand distances with. One of them is distance. The other, you will agree, is auto fare. How many times have you asked "How far is it?" and got "about 30 rupees by auto" as an answer? So, we decided to provide auto fares in appropriate cities where standardized math-computable auto fares exist. I am sure this will also come in handy for those uninitiated travellers who get ripped off by local auto drivers.

There are a bunch of other nifty features hiding beneath this product. For instance, Watch out for the "Send this to your mobile" widget in the instruction set when you search for directions. Maybe, you are interested in the "Share" feature using which you can embed a map in your blog or webpage or even take a snapshot of the map as an image.

There is a lot to write about these but I will keep them for another day. For now, Drive safe and Don't Honk when not necessary.

At proto.in I presented Yahoo's perpectives and experience in innovating and incubation new product concepts (Deck Uploaded). But Harshil Karia from Watblog captured some of the key essence of my talk here.

I can't lay the stress enough on the key points. It applies universally to all product innovators (big or small). Good to keep in mind.

It's been a rapid month trying to get the site up and live. It took a lot of volunteering from several folks across Yahoo! to get this finally out and I am loving this opportunity to finally have an outlet for the creative voice from folks over in Yahoo! Bangalore (yblr) & India.

So what is India.Next*? Well many things. For one this is one place where you will find cool creations, hacks [sic] from within yblr and without [sic] in the open (read more about it here and here). Additionally this is our outlet for trying out new products and services we incubate (alpha/beta) and we hope that you will actively consume these as we serve out and give us your critical (positive :-p) feeback. More over time we will be establishing a forum of interaction between our experts, intrapreneurs, leaders and the community (you!) that will foster product innovation in India. I am really excited about all these outcomes that we are planning for and can't wait to get all of this established very quickly. But for all good things there must be some wait.

You ask (rightly so) "The site is up but where is the content!" It's coming as we speak and the site content and structure will change and grow dramatically in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned for more!

I want to thank all the folks in and outside yahoo! who have helped shape this site and the goals we want to achieve.

are just few of the questions that led to the conceptualisation of Yahoo! Our City.

Yahoo! Our City provides a very interesting, rich and dynamically updated perspective of our city as seen and experienced by us all. You can use Our City to

• Explore photos, videos, events, news, weather, blogs and a lot more
• Share events, photos, videos, trip plans and blogs with others

Our City keeps you updated with the latest in your city through news, events, blogs, photos, weather and a lot more. This is the new generation of the web - City content of the users, by the users and for the users. For a start, take a look at monuments in delhi, hear podcasts about bangalore, browse Kannada and Hindi content - all content created by users. There is a lot to Explore and Share all created by users like you and me.

Check out your city (40 + 5 are available) at http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com.

The internet has to become more local, interesting, engaging and useful - the journey has just begun.

Let us know what you think about Yahoo! Our City (click on the feeback link on the footer of every page) and click on Invite button on the home page to tell your friends about it.

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